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5 Best Screencast Software For Creating YouTube Videos

Screencast applications help users create video tutorials and training courses by capturing desktop content. Such tools often provide numerous handy options for adding voice and music to recorded videos, as well as to annotate video frames to provide useful information to the viewer. I myself make use of such applications to provide my readers with video guides which are often added to some of the posts at WML Cloud. These screencasts are also uploaded to the official WML Cloud YouTube Channel, as well as to our channels at Vimeo and DailyMotion. If you are looking for a good free tool to create screencasts for educational, business or personal use, then here are a few suggestions for you.

List Of Screencast Tools

BB FlashBack Express

This is a free Windows tool for creating screencasts. It is an easy to use freeware with options to record the entire desktop, a selected portion of your desktop or a specific window. This application also has a more enhanced paid version known as “BB FlashBack” (Professional and Standard Editions), whereas the free version is called “BB FlashBack Express” with some stripped down features. Nonetheless, the free version of this app is enough to provide you with complete functionality to record your screen with voice over and to upload it to YouTube. After installation, make sure that you register your free version in 30 days to continue using the app without any interruptions.

Some of the main features of this application are as follows:

Recording Features: You can record your desktop, along with the output from your mike and webcam.

Sharing Features: You can share movies with just a click by uploading them to YouTube and other video sharing sites.

Ezvid

Ezvid, as the name suggests is an easy to use screen recording software for recording your screen and taking screenshots. With Ezvid you can instantly record your desktop or browser and even make gaming videos to record your computer screen. Ezvid automatically records and renders your video at 1280 x 720 HD and is optimized for sharp display on YouTube. Ezvid is especially popular among gamers, who use it for recording their gaming sessions.

The good thing about Ezvid is that it also provides video editing features which can help you further refine your videos. Ezvid provides output in many media formats including AVI, WMV, and MOV. Moreover, you can create slideshows by using image formats such as JPG, PNG and GIF. It is worth pointing out that like most free tools Ezvid tries to install some third-party applications during the installation process, make sure that you uncheck the installation of these apps if you do not wish to install them.

Ezvid works with all commonly used Windows based operating systems including:

Best Free Screen Capturer

This is another nifty screencasting and screenshot taking application with the option to record videos from a window, the whole desktop or a selected portion of your screen. It provides all the major functions that should be available in a screenshot taking application. Furthermore, it offers smooth functionality for recording your screen (via Animation option) and enables saving recorded videos to WMV or AVI format, with FPS (frames per second) and audio source configuration utility.

Bandicam

Bandicam is a high performance application which can be used as a Game recorder, Video capture and Desktop screen capturing tool. The best thing about Bandicam is that other than the desktop, it can also be used to record games and streaming videos. This functionality is often lacked by many screen recording tools as they can be often dysfunctional when capturing content from streaming videos or active games. Furthermore, Bandicam provides some very specific features for recording videos and you can even configure specific configurations for capturing your videos such as initiating or halting recording, shutting down your system according to recording time or file size. You can also configure options to change the video’s file Size, Frames Per Second, Codec and Bitrate.

If you wish to record the proceeding of a game, make sure that you select the DirectX/OpenGL window mode. Unlike the above mentioned applications, Bandicam is not available for free but you can download it on trial basis.

Camtasia Studio

When it comes to tools for creating screencasts, no doubt Camtasia Studio is a giant. This application suite is quite resource intensive and the reason is that it comes with many fully loaded features to allow creating, editing and modifying screencasts. Other than a simple screen recorder, Camtasia gives you the tools to truly customize and edit your videos. Record on-screen activity, add imported media, create interactive content, and share high-quality HD videos that your viewers can watch anytime, on almost any device.

Camtasia Studio even has a plugin for Microsoft PowerPoint which can help you easily create presentations with a complete voice over. While the MS PowerPoint plug-in is available for free, Camtasia Studio is a paid application, with the option to download a free trial version.

The Camtasia Studio presenter can carry out all steps in a set sequence and jump from one application to another (from the Camtasia suite) without any interruptions in the recording process. Camtasia provides tools to fully customize and edit recorded videos, as well as to import media to create more interactive content. When using Camtasia you can even stop the recording process with a hotkey combination after which it renders the input that has been captured and applies the pre-defined user settings. One example of such settings is the ability to include or exclude the cursor. Videos created using Camtasia Studio can be instantly shared across YouTube, Facebook and Screencast.com. Camtasia Studio has version for Windows and Mac OS X and works with the following versions: